Category Archives: British Invasion

Regular readers of this blog are aware that the proprietor approaches the work of paid music critics with healthy skepticism. Some have pretensions of grandeur (Christgau, Erlewine) while others work for publications who accept advertising from record companies (Pitchfork, Rolling Stone), assuming that readers will ignore that fundamental conflict of interest and accept their evaluations of artists working for those record companies as unbiased. In one sense, those critics are merely a reflection of the precipitous decline in professional journalism in the United States and United Kingdom—it’s all about the ratings, it’s all about the circulation, it’s all about the money, fuck the notion of journalistic standards and screw integrity. The presence of Rupert Murdoch publications in both countries has clearly facilitated the move towards inflated controversy and sensationalism in the daily journals.

The British were way, way ahead of the States in cheapening journalism; Murdoch launched his topless Page 3 as far back as 1969. The music rags soon began filling column space with outlandish opinions designed to spark controversy, and the publications made little effort to hide the fact that their #1 goal was not to provide the public with useful, carefully-researched information but to do whatever it takes to increase readership, which in turn increases advertising, which in turn makes a few self-important people very wealthy. British music critics tried very hard to identify the next big thing in music, often inflating the value of a particular artist (hello, Stone Roses) as they attempted to remain relevant and project the appearance of cutting-edge trend setters. More often than not, they lagged behind the public in that area, rallying to the support of a hot new artist in response to record sales.

The critical reaction to The Great Escape is quite instructive in this regard. On first release, it was the greatest thing to hit Britain since William the Conqueror. After all, Blur had defeated Oasis in the “Battle of Britain” when the lead single from the album (“Country House”) outsold the promotional single from Morning Glory (“Roll with It”). The message from the press was BLUR IS BETTER THAN OASIS. BLUR HAS ALWAYS BEEN BETTER THAN OASIS.

Then Oasis achieved something that no other Britpop band had come close to achieving: mass market acceptance in the United States. Q withdrew their review of The Great Escape and issued an apology; other critics piled on, accusing Blur of trying to make the British public miserable through their allegedly cynical world-view. Some accused Blur of faking their affinity for the underclasses and launched the narrative that Oasis was the real working class band. The message shifted: OASIS IS BETTER THAN BLUR. OASIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN BETTER THAN BLUR.

Even Damon Albarn got caught up in the Orwellian reassessment, defining The Great Escape as a “messy” release. As I trust an artist’s opinion of their work less than I do the opinion of a paid critic, we’ll ignore that piece of self-immolation. The truth about this shift in critical favor was best expressed by BBC music journalist James McMahon, who opined that the “critical euphoria that would prove to be short-lived – truth be told, about as long as it took publishers to realise Oasis would probably shift more magazines for them.”

Albarn wasn’t the only Blur member who lacked fond memories of the album or the experience; Graham Coxon had fucking had it with the whole Britpop scene and was ready to move on; there were also growing tensions between Coxon and the other band members. However, bad memories of the interpersonal dynamics and their mutual desire to hurry up and get to the future serve to cloud their views of the album’s worth. Regardless of tension and a pending shift in artistic direction, The Great Escape is a worthy conclusion to the “Life Trilogy.” While the quality of the album is a mixed bag (strong first half, weak middle and transitional final phase), I admire the courage of the record, captured in the willingness to call bullshit for what it is.

The album title wasn’t selected until the last minute, but it reflects the dominant theme. The characters in each story (including Damon Albarn himself) are in varying degrees attempting to avoid the truth about their lives, finding escape mechanisms in everything from sex to status, from drugs to dreams, from the latest trend to pulling all-nighters glued to the telly. To dismiss Blur’s perspective on British life as “cynical” says more about the labelers than the songs themselves; critics often use the term when they’re uncomfortable with satiric views that hit too close to home or with those who dare to disturb the status quo by exposing what’s wrong with the world. I don’t find The Great Escape particularly cynical, and only occasionally melancholy. It’s a hard look at the reality of the times, and excuse me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s pretty much what Swift, Dickens and Thackeray did in their universally honored works.

The Great Escape isn’t Parklife, and that message is communicated sonically in the edgy opening passage of “Stereotypes,” where Graham Coxon leads with a screeching B minor chord accompanied by a foreboding minor key pattern on the organ. Damon Albarn’s world-weary vocal communicates a sense of exhausted impatience with the all-too human tendency to follow a trend, to be in with the in-crowd, no matter how ludicrous the adventure. Here we have The Case of the Oversexed Divorcee, who believes she needs to fuck her brains out because . . . because that’s what divorcees are supposed to do to convince themselves they’ve still got it:

The suburbs they are sleeping
But he’s dressing up tonight
She likes a man in uniform he loves to wear it tight
They’re on the lovers sofa they’re on the patio
And when the fun is over watch themselves on video

I’ll bet she spends hours with her divorcee girlfriends comparing boyfriend dick size and bragging about the impossibly difficult Kama Sutra position she pulled off the night before. I love sex as much or more than the next person, but this is gross sex, superficial titillation designed to bolster one’s fragile ego to avoid facing the emptiness inside. The arrangement is rock-solid, with pulsating bass from Alex James, strong punctuation from Dave Rowntree and the ever-present screeching minor chord from Graham Coxon sounding the mental health alarm.

Blur or Oasis? Oasis or Blur? Four days after the launch of Britain’s most hyped battle of the bands Manchester’s working class lads appear to be edging ahead of London’s art school trendies in the race for the No. 1 spot.

Both groups released their £2.99 singles on Monday, claiming to be bitter enemies, which led some in the music industry to compare the rivalry to that between the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

Early indications suggest that Oasis’s Roll With It is edging ahead of Blur’s Country House in sales, so the Guardian conducted its own survey of the music critics who really matter – the fans.

In Manchester, home of Oasis, one of the city’s leading music stores was buzzing with debate about the Blur-Oasis head-to-head. Andrew McQueen, assistant at Piccadilly Records, tried to give an objective assessment. He dismissed Manchester’s alleged chauvinism about Oasis as merely a mirage in a PR person’s mind. He paid Blur some gracious compliments but his loyalties soon became obvious.

“Oasis plagiarise from the great names – the Beatles, Stones, Kinks, the Who. But they make their own exciting rock and roll. It’s not pompous and has great tunes. They wear their hearts on their sleeves. They go for the jugular and move people.

“Blur plunder the past, too, but they do it with an irony and a cleverness which I don’t like. Their music has a knowing wink. Oasis seem more heartfelt, more direct. Blur are probably better musicians. They write good songs – but you don’t feel they mean it.”

This view seems to be born out by record sales: 75 to Oasis, 25 to Blur at Piccadilly. Round the corner at the Virgin store, the tally was 300 Oasis to 250 Blur.

If only today’s journalists would report genuinely important news with such doggedness and detail.

Blur did pull it out in the end, for what it’s worth. To my ears it was a no-contest battle—“Country House” is a far stronger song than “Roll with It,” the weakest of any of the singles released from Morning Glory. Kinks fans will immediately make the connection to the anti-hero of the Face to Face trilogy and the song “A House in the Country,” but unlike that character, who “don’t need no sedatives to ease his troubled mind,” Blur’s Man of the Nineties “takes all kinds of pills” and passes the day “reading Balzac and knocking back Prozac.” You don’t really need those details, for all you need to know about this self-important asshole is contained in the absolutely brilliant line, “I’m a professional cynic but my heart’s not in it.” In the context of the theme of escape, the country house represents a complete failure to leave the rat race behind, as the gentleman in question has traded one form of stress for another in the form of health nazi paranoia (“He doesn’t drink, smoke, laugh/Takes herbal baths in the country”). The use of the phrase “animal farm” leads most people to draw a connection to Orwell, but the video for the song, full of bouncy, smiling, dimwitted babes, suggests the animalistic, mechanical sex of a perpetual orgy. The arrangement is terribly exciting, featuring an ironically jaunty beat with a stunning build to the chorus where Blur mingles rising lead and background vocals to reach a satisfying climax. I also love the high harmony bridge with its hints of Beatles and Beach Boys as the voices join together to reveal the awful truth that this wealthy, entitled prick feels terribly sorry for himself.

I’m not 100% sure where the critical perception of cynicism came from, but the melancholy “Best Days” is a likely source because it explodes the long-standing myth peddled by regret-filled old farts that the best years of our lives are when we’re young and responsibility-free. Not only is that notion total bullshit, but it sets up young people to believe that something’s wrong with them when the good times they’re supposed to be having fail to materialize. While the having-to-work part is a bit of a drag, I’m having a much better time in my thirties than I ever did as a confused, physiologically unstable and uninformed teen hanging out with other insecure people who also had no idea what the fuck they were doing. Since celebration of youth was a key component of the Britpop scene, Blur is to be commended for repeatedly pointing out (see “Girls and Boys”) that the mindless search for sex and substance-fueled good times isn’t the best way to establish a foundation for a meaningful future.

The opening verses set up the fundamental problem of modern humanity: our perpetual state of separation from one another. The bells toll at St. Mary-le-Bow church as they have on that site for centuries as Londoners exit the city hoping “someone’s waiting out there for them.” Meanwhile, a cabbie ferries the young drunks around Soho, compensating for that unpleasant, impersonal task by dreaming of sunnier climes. In a vain search for something remotely resembling intimacy, the poetic camera zooms in to take a closer look and comes up empty:

Trellick Tower’s been calling
I know she’ll leave me in the morning
In hotel cells, listening to dial tones
Remote controls and cable moans
In his drink, he’s talking
Gets disconnected sleepwalking back home

Other people wouldn’t like to hear you
If you said that these are the best days of our lives
Other people turn around and laugh at you
If you said that these are the best days of our lives

The music is quite lovely in a melancholy sense, somewhat reminiscent of the structures and norms of the baroque rock of the mid-60’s. I adore the descending figure that serves as Graham Coxon’s guitar solo, where he repeats the relational pattern of the notes as he moves down the fretboard, reinforcing the motif of disappointment. The chorus harmonies are again excellent, and though it didn’t make the cut as a single, I’d have to say that “Best Days” is my favorite song on the album.

Our travels now take us to the place where most of us go to drown our troubles to meet the “Charmless Man,” the embodiment of a person decked out in all the trappings of status with all the depth of an evaporating puddle of rain. Though he meets all the criteria of one who “has it made” (a portfolio, an expensive and empty education from a superficially prestigious school and A-list entry to all the fashionable places), it’s all for naught, as his status fails to impress anyone. I’m certainly not impressed that “he knows his claret from his Beaujolais,” which is like knowing the difference between a Guinness and a Diet Coke. The only thing he’s got going for him is that all his acquaintances are equally charmless and completely supportive in maintaining appearances:

He thinks his educated airs, those family shares will protect him
That we’ll respect him
He moves in circles of friends who just pretend
That they like him, he does the same to them
And when you put it all together
There’s the model of a charmless man

It’s no surprise that his secret role model is Ronnie Kray, the head of a notoriously brutal criminal enterprise who evaded the authorities for quite some time because his nightclubs were popular with the Charmless Man Set. Perhaps if Ronnie were around today in our more corruption-supportive environment, he’d be up for Prime Minister, and if you doubt that assertion, let me draw your attention to the gangster enterprise running the United States. Our Charmless Man would be a great fit for the Trump administration, willing to mold himself into any shape likely to result in increased status, let values and integrity be damned. The rollicking music reflects a party where the musicians are trying with all their might to keep the good times going, and while it works just fine, I think a small horn section with growling saxophones and exaggerated trombone slides would have highlighted the gangsterism more effectively.

“Topman” takes its name from the trendy menswear chain, and Blur was thoughtful enough to mention Hugo and Boss to avoid any perceptions of favoritism. I think this song is a hoot, not because of a brilliant musical structure or stunning lyrics but for the deep-voice background vocals repeating the syllable “Oh” with supporting harmonica in the opening passage. The sound reminds me of Johnny Preston’s “Running Bear,” a 1959 monument to American racism that tried to capitalize on the cowboys-and-Indians fascination of the time by featuring white people using low-scale vocalizations to mimic their perception of how “Indians” communicate. The young braves of England don’t dress up in war paint but they do cling to the latest fashions and compensate for their youthful lack of wealth by powering up putt-putt cars (Clios, Saxos and Fiats) and loudly cruising through the streets (the boy-racers in the States did the same to Hondas and old-model Acuras). The Nineties were the period when “personal branding” really began, led by the garment industry when they started using clothes to sell clothes by advertising on the clothes themselves. I try to imagine building my identity around the clothing brands I choose and the cigarettes I smoke and just get fucking depressed at the thought of it.

The Great Escape isn’t cynical! This is real shit, people! Kids have killed other kids for their Nikes! Wake the fuck up! Our societies create insanity!

As was true in Parklife, the weakest part of the album is in the middle. It begins with “The Universal,” a song featuring lyrics about a future where we all go into mass denial about the ugliness of reality with the assistance of a universal drug. As Aldous Huxley had already covered the concept pretty thoroughly in Brave New World, the song doesn’t break any new ground. Worse still, the music is as un-futuristic as one can imagine, a Mantovani-esque string-heavy arrangement with Henry Mancini overtones. “The Universal” began life as a ska number (bad idea) and was headed for the crapper until Damon Albarn “saved” the song with the string section. I think early Pulp might have been able to do something with the song, given their occasional experimental leanings, but as it is, it’s a promise of something big that fails to deliver. Unlike “The Universal,” “Mr Robinson’s Quango” skips the pretentious opening but also falls flat in a too-crude attack on political appointees who fatten themselves at the public trough. “He Thought of Cars” continues the mid-album slump using a weak metaphor of “things that are supposed to get us to destinations” that only brings us to Destination: Loneliness—a theme more effectively treated elsewhere on the album. The “meh” part of the album ends with “It Could Be You,” an exposé of the absurd fantasy that a person can only be happy when they win the lottery, a topic that would have been treated more effectively had they given us the end of the story—that many lottery winners wind up broke, besieged and in therapy.

The pre-mayoral version of Ken Livingstone steps into save the day with his drier-than-the-driest-martini narration of a typical day in the life of one Ernold Same:

Ernold Same awoke from the same dream
In the same bed at the same time
Looked in the same mirror, made the same frown
And felt the same way as he did every day
Then Ernold Same caught the same train
At the same station, sat in the same seat
With the same nasty stain
Next to same old what’s-his-name
On his way to the same place with the same name
To do the same thing again and again and again
Poor old Ernold Same

Blur then launches the musical version, a nicely layered vocal ensemble that confirms Ernold’s endless loop of sameness and adds a touch of compassion to the recitation of the all-too familiar dreary routine followed by billions of people across the globe.

When your single, solitary goal in life is to become the attractive, devil-may care rich guy in the television commercial, you are by definition a hollow man—and the lead character of “Globe Alone.” Anticipating the lo-fi adventures of their next album, Blur comes close to pop punk in this high-speed romp where Dave Rountree gets a nice workout and Damon Albarn does his best Johnny Rotten imitation on the choruses. The lead character is such a disconnected, self-centered loser that he a.) gets a stiff prick when he fondles his new cell phone, b.) fantasizes about Sharon Stone (I used to see her every now and then at the Whole Foods Market on California and Franklin back in the day and she was pretty hot) and c.) takes comfort in his insistence that he “wouldn’t be seen at bedtime/Without putting Calvin Kleins on.” Logic would dictate that the people who do the laundry for him learned to slip on sanitary gloves before they picked up his crusty shorts and tossed them into the wash. The contradiction between the assertive music and the happy-slappy la-la-las create a psychological tension that simply can’t hold, but rather than opting for the classic nervous breakdown, this hero of materialists everywhere opts to believe that the outside world exists for his convenience and no one else:

He is because he saw it on a commercial break
And if he doesn’t get what he wants then gets a headache
Because he needs it, wants it, almost, loves it
He’s here on his own, all globe alone
Here on his own, all globe alone
Here on his own

Please don’t introduce me to anyone like this guy. Ever.

And I’m not sure I’d like to meet “Dan Abnormal,” aka Damon Albarn sans the rockstar regalia. In this self-reflective piece, he describes his “real life” as one combining television binging with trips to McDonald’s, where he unnecessarily threatens the employees with bodily harm unless they cough up the burger and chips. Hardly the glamorous life of a celebrity, but I believe that’s the point of the song: to blow the rockstar image to smithereens and show his fan base that he’s subject to the same petty whims and neuroses that dominate their lives. At the time, Albarn was experiencing the classic identity crisis that comes with the shift from normal life to the spotlight, one of many cultural icons who have suffered its debilitating effects in the form of nervous breakdowns (Thom Yorke, Ray Davies) or immersion in the drug scene (too many to mention). Kurt Cobain bemoaned his depersonalizing experience in “Smells Like Team Spirit” in the line, “Here we are now—entertain us,” and Albarn echoes that sentiment in the opening stanza (“Meanie Leanie come on down/Come and entertain the town”). It’s a tricky balance between complaining about the fact that the transformation has given you wealth and the fame you thought you wanted and detached commentary about the fundamentally dehumanizing process of idolization, and I think Damon Albarn struck the right tone here.

The Great Escape ends with a curious song about life in the Japanese workforce, “Yuko and Hiro.” Few cultures embraced workaholic behavior as thoroughly as the Japanese, but that embrace was not the manic behavior of Americans desperately trying to get ahead of each other but an allegedly honorable exchange of extra work for lifetime employment (at least in the larger firms). Although some progress has been made in the last two decades in reducing the length of the workweek, the norm of undying loyalty to the company still inspires overwork—so much so that the Japanese have a term for “death by overwork” (karoshi). This is the environment Blur attempts to capture in “Yuko and Hiro,” a deeply sad state of affairs where love and companionship are available only one day a week and booze is essential to survival:

We work togetherWe work for the companyThat looks to the futureWe work hard to please themThey will protect us

I never see youWe’re never togetherI’ll love you foreverI drink in the eveningsIt helps with relaxingI can’t sleep without drinking

The music is appropriately morose and semi-tragic, featuring loose approximations of the dissonance (at least to Western ears) of Japanese music and some lovely vocals from a female trio. What I like about the song is that it makes listeners aware that the challenges of finding a meaningful life in the context of a consumerist culture aren’t limited to the British Isles, but represent a global quality-of-life challenge. I wish they would have let the song fade into oblivion rather than tacking on a harmonium-driven music hall fragment to the end, for it interferes with a very powerful closing message.

As things turned out, The Great Escape was hardly the end of Britpop (as Pulp would conclusively demonstrate with the biggest fucking exclamation point ever), but it was the end of Blur’s uneasy flirtation with the movement. Though they still remain popular in the Isles to this day, Blur and the individual members moved on to explore different forms of music, from electronica to lo-fi to hip-hop. Regardless of their later achievements, they will always be remembered for the trilogy, and I can’t listen to the Blur of the 90’s without wishing for a tectonic shift in popular tastes that embraces intelligent, melodic and socially-aware music.

The awkward, stiff, mechanical choreography of the band members disturbed me, especially when combined with the Nazi-like echoes from all that boot-stomping. Something told me this was more than an aversion to canned presentations or echoes of a past life under Hitler, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why it bothered me so much. After weeks of angst and frustration, I decided to consult the one source that explains everything you need to know in life.

Star Trek!

I found my answer in the TNG episode, “Data’s Day,” in the scene where Beverly tries to teach Data how to dance. He is mechanical, robotic, awkward. Even after he stops stepping on her toes, his smile is frozen, arctic, exaggerated. Just like The Dave Clark Five on “Bits and Pieces!”

Aha! The Dave Clark Five were androids!

Well, not the whole band. I think Mike Smith was the real one, controlling the androids from a strategically-placed position through his cleverly-disguised keyboard while giving the band a more terrestrial sound so they could more easily winnow their way into the hearts of millions of innocent, pubescent young ladies. I’ll go even further and provocatively suggest that The Dave Clark Five were not the only products of cybernetic engineering to participate in the Invasion. Mass production of androids is the only viable explanation for why hundreds of British performers appeared out of nowhere at the exact same moment in history to conquer the music world. Evidence? You want evidence? How about “The Freddie?” No human with any sense of self-respect could have conceived of or done The Freddie! Watch this clip and listen to Freddie’s robotic voice, study the awkward dialogue between Freddie and Trini Lopez, and pay close attention to the obviously programmed dance movements:

I think I’m onto something here! I’ve done some serious research on that period of history and I know my stuff! The Sixties were the decade of powerful, top-secret cabals staffed with handsome secret agents like James Bond and Jim Phelps mixing exploding martinis for sinister foreigners to thwart their deep and diabolical plans to destroy our cherished, hard-won freedom! The CIA, KGB, MI5 and the IMF team had powers that even the most paranoid people haven’t begun to imagine. I mean, we’re talking about people who had super-advanced technology that they stole from the aliens they locked up in Area 51 so they could fake the moon landing and get the public to believe that JFK and Marilyn Monroe were dead when I know for a fact that neither of them died, but that they used JFK’s inheritance to buy a remote tropical island so they could drink daiquiris and fuck all the time because that’s what JFK wanted to do anyway and Marilyn, well, she swung both ways and JFK liked variety and so they brought along another woman and, according to a very reliable source who’s written over thirty books on the subject, that person was none other than Amelia Earhart!

Well, if they could do all that, they could make android rock stars, couldn’t they? Couldn’t they?

I’ll let you chew on my brilliant conspiracy theory for a while and get back to The Dave Clark Five. Baby Boomers remember them as the band who posed the greatest threat to The Beatles’ dominance of the charts. My generation nevah hoid of da bums. Seriously. Millenials know and actually like The Beatles, find the The Rolling Stones quaint and amusing museum pieces, and those who listen to garage rock on Little Steven’s Underground Garage probably know early Kinks, Yardbirds and maybe Them. The DC5? Wasn’t that some kind of airplane?

This collection might help restore some of their former glory, especially if the listener is called away to attend to a house fire about halfway through the record. The Dave Clark Five: The Hits is . . . how shall I say it? . . . front-loaded. All the great stuff—and there was some great stuff—can be found on the first half of the collection, in the first dozen or so songs. After that, well . . . Here’s an actual transcript of my reactions to some of the turkeys that fill the remaining digital space:

“What the fuck?”

“Arggh! What was that?”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

“Oh, no—not that! They did that?”

And several renditions of my personal favorite: “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

I’ll limit my more insightful comments to the hits up to and including “Over and Over,” leaving the rest for an appropriately obscene epitaph. The album kinda sorta tracks the U. K. hit order, but don’t expect much in terms of musical development on this journey. The Dave Clark Five in their prime were a solid rock band with a great lead singer in Mike Smith but with a very small sweet spot that kept shrinking as the years rolled by. What this collection manages to accomplish is to clearly delineate the two phases of the band. The first phase was their “The Beatles’ #1 Challenger” phase, a period of musical and financial success that lasted a couple of years. Their second, lengthier phase was a bizarre mix of soul, surf, country, sickeningly sappy and flat-out lousy that we’ll call their “What the Fuck?” stage.

It’s interesting that they remained popular in the U. K. through 1970. My dad was shocked to hear they did anything after 1966, and had pretty much the same reaction that I had to the second half of this record. Since he’s the one who gave his little girl a potty mouth by swearing voluminously during Giants games in the truly arctic winds of soon-to-be-history-thank-god Candlestick Park, I won’t bore you with the repetition of previously-used cuss words. I will, however, humbly and thankfully dedicate this review to my foul-mouthed father.

“Do You Love Me”: Every British band kicked off their careers with covers, usually of American R&B hits. This one was a particular favorite of those rampaging British in the years of invasion, recorded by such luminaries as Brian Poole and The Tremeloes and The Hollies. The original by The Contours was pretty rough for the Gidget era, even if it did pander to the mainstream by mentioning The Twist and The Mashed Potatoes. DC5’s version matches the energy of the original, as Mike Smith belts out a good, rough vocal and the three members without saxophones in their mouths provide enthusiastic response and background vocals. The only voice you don’t hear is that of Denis Payton, who played both alto and tenor sax. Let’s just say up front that Denis Payton will never be confused with John Coltrane.

“Glad All Over”: The monster hit that knocked The Beatles off the top of the charts (in the U. K., anyway) is simply one of the great rock ‘n’ roll songs of all time. A call-and-response song like “Do You Love Me,” this Clark-Smith piece is more disciplined and much more powerful. What accounts for the energy is a combination of Mike Smith’s confident vocal, Dave Clark’s neanderthal drum work and that inspired decision to split the opening lines of the chorus: “I’m feeling . . .” (BAM! BAM!) “GLAD/crash ALL OVER!” Goddamn if that isn’t one of the most exciting moments in all of rock! I also love the stop-stutter-stop crescendo at the end of the bridge, “I-I-will stay”with a slight touch of echo. The bass is fab, and Denny handles his rhythm sax part of four or five notes without a skip. They had to call it something, so they called it the Tottenham Sound, but it’s really Phil Spector with a British accent.

“Bits and Pieces”: I heard Joan Jett’s version before I heard the DC5’s, and have grown to love them both, as long as I don’t have to watch that performance on Top of the Pops. Joan’s is more sass, spit and gum-snapping indifference; Mike Smith’s is more “I’ve had it with this shit, woman!” Like “Glad All Over,” it opens with the drums, and like both preceding songs, it’s a call-and-response number (the snob who wrote the Wikipedia article on this song just had to refer to it as “antiphonal” to raise his cred with the Greek scholar community and raise his chances for entry into Oxford). Let’s see . . . drums as the centerpiece, call-and-response vocals, sax and guitar as rhythm instruments . . . do I detect a formula here? They would vary this formula only slightly through phase one, but they deserve credit for milking this formula for all it was worth.

“Can’t You See That She’s Mine”: Another Clark-Smith composition (with two lines pinched from Ray Charles’ “Sticks and Stones”), they vary the formula and let Mike Smith take center stage with a snappy organ, a knockout vocal with superbly slurred phrasing. They give Denny a shot at the saxophone solo, and sad to say, he blows it (Ha! I love my puns!). But I love this song—Mike Smith could extend those growls as well as anyone, the hallmark of a great rock singer.

“Everybody Knows (I Still Love You)”: This is one of the more interesting songs in their catalogue, with dark harmonies, offbeat chord combinations and shifting tempos. The verse structure is actually bifurcated (love that word!), with a slower, moodier half followed by a more soulful and dynamic section. The DC5 were actually pretty strong on ballads, and I wish they’d done more of those instead of crap like “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” which appeared on their first album. I kid you not.

“Don’t Let Me Down”: The B-side to a 1966 single called “Satisfied with You,” a country-and-western number that was so awful it didn’t even make the cut for this album. This boogie-woogie piano number is much more their style, but it doesn’t measure up to their early hits.

“Anyway You Want It”: One of the limitations of the Dave Clark Five was that their songwriters had a combined vocabulary of about twenty-five words. This one was written by Dave alone, so the repetition is extreme. Not only do they sing “It’s alright” ten times in a row during the chorus, but they repeat “Any way you want it” fourteen times and “That’s the way it will be” ten times. Dave even commits the cardinal sin of using the title line “Any way you want it” for the first and third lines of the bridge. Given the enthusiasm they bring to the music here, Dave could have put a little more effort into the lyrics so that it didn’t wind up sounding like a Burger King commercial. Musically, it has a strong, forceful sound. A warning to all you young fellows, so young and so fine: bad lyrics can kill.

“Wild Weekend”: Okay, try to follow me people. The Dave Clark Five made a movie called Catch Us If You Can. That movie was released in the United States as Having a Wild Weekend, and there was a soundtrack album of the same name, but only four of the twelve songs appeared in the movie. If this sounds like a less-than-focused approach to movie-music-making, you’re right! This collection calls the title track “Wild Weekend,” dropping the “Having a” for reasons unknown. After that ridiculously long explanation, all I have to report is that this is a cliche-ridden number that was probably written in eleven seconds.

“Catch Us If You Can”: The alternative title track has the virtue of a more interesting musical arrangement with the spare finger-snap verses contrasting nicely with the sax-bottomed chorus. The instrumental solo is weak, with thoroughly average harmonica and a sax reminiscent of a duck call. The point of the lyrics is . . . what? “Catch us . . . live at Twickenham . . . if you can?” “Catch us . . . in our new movie . . . if you can?” And why would I want to hear them “yell with all of our might?” In the end, the song reminds me too much of the theme from The Monkees.

I have not seen the movie, which received mixed reviews. Here’s the opening clip with the theme song (uh, British film version theme song):

“Because”: About a year-and-a-half out-of-place on this record, “Because” is one of the great love ballads of the era, pure and simple. It’s also their strongest and most interesting arrangement, from the opening strum (first time I’ve mentioned guitar here, people!) to the blues-tinged riff on the organ that ends the instrumental passage. The lower-pitched harmonies give the song a sincere, gut-level feel that more than compensates for any sweetness. The UK record company refused to release this as an A-side single because they were afraid it strayed too far from the formula, another classically dumb decision by the guys at the top. This is Dave Clark’s songwriting masterpiece, and it more than deserved A-side attention and publicity.

“I Like It Like That”: I don’t care for either Chris Kenner’s original or DC5’s cover much, but if I had to choose, I’d take Mike Smith’s vocal over Kenner’s any day of the week. Mike overplays his hand on the closing line, but really, this song doesn’t give a singer much to work with, as it’s a rather silly song.

“Reelin’ and Rockin'”: Not even close to the Chuck Berry original. One of Mike’s weakest vocals, largely because he never finds the right groove for this song. The arrangement is sloppy and has the sound of a last-minute decision . . . a bad one.

“Over and Over”: This is one time that the cover crushes the original. First recorded by Bobby Day, the guy who brought you the gag-me-with-a-spoon “Rockin’ Robin,” The DC5 takes this song and makes it their own. The shared vocals are tight, the rhythm sax actually sounds strong and full and Dave’s got the drum fills down to a science. It’s also a harbinger of the decline to come, for at this point in their career, they should have managed to wean themselves from cover songs.

After “Over and Over,” The Dave Clark Five began their transformation from credible rock outfit to third-rate lounge act. They opted not to take the more experimental directions other bands were taking during that pivotal year of 1967, but for reasons unknown, they also stopped playing to their core strength: doing energetic, fun rock ‘n’ roll. Instead, they became a pop cover band, and their song selection was simply atrocious. “Put a Little Love in Your Heart?” Are you fucking kidding me? “Sha-Na-Na-Hey-Hey-Kiss Him Goodbye?” Oh, for fuck’s sake! The Youngbloods’ “Get Together?” What the hell?

The imaginative explanation for this shocking decline is that the original androids wore down, had to be replaced, and because they’d used all the alien-built parts left from the Area 51 spaceship, they contracted with British Motor Corporation, noted for making irresistibly beautiful automobiles that spent most of their lives in the mechanic’s shop. The earthbound explanation is that there was a fundamental flaw in the band’s structure: Dave Clark was the leader and the band manager. That is an artistic conflict of interest, and since Dave wasn’t that artistic in the first place, management won out . . . and we all know that most managers are primarily concerned with preserving power and status. This led to what appears to have been a “retrenchment strategy,” where they relied on their core audience in the UK to keep buying whatever crap they put out to preserve the capital earned from the Invasion. Their last U. S. single to make either Top 100 list was “Please Stay” at #96 in early 1967; their last nine singles failed to chart on either Billboard or Cashbox. Their presence hung in the air a few years longer in the U. K., where even “Get Together” made it into the Top Ten. All indications are that it was only going to get worse; the two previously unreleased tracks, “Universal Love” and “Every American Citizen,” only proved that The Dave Clark Five had no business trying to grapple with metaphysical or spiritual topics.

Simply put, when you stop growing, you die, and that’s what happened to The Dave Clark Five and many other Invasion bands who failed to expand their sound during the great shift in 1966-1967. Having said that, I can completely understand how they achieved status as the top contender to the throne in 1964. They put out some outstanding rock songs and two exceptionally strong ballads, and on a singles-only basis, The DC5’s output that year is pretty impressive, even when compared to The Beatles’ single releases. When you go deeper, though, and look at the music on the albums, there is no contest: The Beatles had far more depth in their catalogue. Even then their albums were full of songs that could have easily been Top 10 singles had they chose to flood the market even more than they had already. DC5 never came close to producing a memorable album because they lacked range and musical imagination.

My feeling is we should remember, honor and enjoy the great music they produced during a very exciting time in musical history and leave it at that.